In Preventive Medicine, a doctor proactively prevents a disease or treats a disease thereby preventing future problems.

In Preventive Medicine, a doctor provides:-

1. Primal and primordial Prevention – It includes information provided to future parents about measures to avoid the development of risk factors in their upcoming child before birth itself.

2. Primary Prevention – It includes promotion of health, diet and exercise awareness in individuals and local community.

3. Secondary Prevention – It includes conducting screening tests to detect symptoms or signs of a disease before it affect a person. It also involves informing appropriate authorities if she or he encounters health issues which can affect local community or public at large.
For example –

• Treating prediaketes condition before patient becomes diabetic
• Treating high cholesterol before it affects heart
• Cancer screening
• Depression screening
• Informing authorities about increased cases of Dengue, Diarrhoea or Tuberculosis etc in locality

4. Tertiary Prevention – It included measures to reduce the harm of already present disease.
For example –

• Checking kidney’s health in diabetic patient to prevent chronic kidney disease
• Checking heart’s health in high blood pressure patients to prevent coronary artery disease
• Checking vitamin D levels and bone density in elderly patient to prevent fractures

5. Quaternary Prevention – It includes measures to identify a patient at risk of over-medicalisation (over and excessive medicines or treatment), to protect the patient from new unnecessary medical testing or intervention and to suggest treatments or advice which is ethically acceptable.